Fall in Love With Astrid Bergès-Frisbey

For French and Spanish phenom Astrid Bergès-Frisbey—cozied up here in fall's hand-hewn knits and oversize coats— landing a role in the buzzed-about indie I Origins took little more than a blink of her multihued eyes.

In July's science-versus-spirituality indie, I Origins—in which scientists make a game-changing evolutionary discovery about the human eye—actress Astrid Bergès-Frisbey is tragic, freewheeling Sofi, a bewitching partygoer whose mystical beliefs diametrically oppose those of Michael Pitt's atheist scientist. Spoiler alert: He falls madly in love with her anyway. As did audiences at Sundance, who came away from the film buzzing about the power of Bergès-Frisbey's performance—equal parts seduction and heartbreak—against the foil of Pitt's cool logic. Not to mention her beauty. "Very often, when an actress is as beautiful as Astrid physically, they lack intelligence and craft," Pitt says. "But Astrid is a true student of cinema; she isn't interested in exploiting her looks for financial gain or fame."

Nonetheless, the 28-year-old's beguiling bone structure is the source of a running biographical glitch. "It's just crazy—I did one commercial in my life," Bergès-Frisbey says. "People call me a 'model-actress,' when I just never started with that...it's not my story." To American audiences, she's best known as Syrena, the kidnapped mermaid who works her spell on Sam Claflin in that little billion-dollar franchise Pirates of the Caribbean. But, born in Barcelona to a Spanish father and a half-French, half-American mother and raised in the French countryside, she's been making multiculti indies in Europe since 2007. "For several years now, I haven't [done] consecutive movies in the same language," says the actress, who speaks five tongues and counting—including the Italian she picked up for her next outing, director Claudio Cupellini's Alaska.

I Origins is only her second English-language film, but writer-director Mike Cahill predicts Hollywood is about to take notice. "She's going to be sought after," he says. For the role of Sofi, Cahill needed "someone who could make spirituality seductive...a person who had a freedom of spirit." Pitt, who had met Bergès-Frisbey briefly, says he told Cahill about her spectacular eyes—a mélange of blue, green, and, oddly, orange. Turns out the actress has sectoral heterochromia, the rare multicolored irises written into the script for Sofi. When she auditioned from Paris via Skype, "I was totally moved by her," Cahill recalls. "She was supersmart, charismatic, funny, and thoughtful—it just felt like she was made for this part."